The Skull
by MuddyWolf
Summary: Thoughts of Pride before, during, and after getting incinerated.


Legal Stuff: Pride is not mine (sadly.) This fic is my brain fart composed of 1 part canon and the rest theories. It's a little graphic. I think. Oo

The Skull

by Blue9Tiger

He had heard it from his Master many times: you will weaken at the sight of your bones.

He had kept the remains for all these years, and only NOW the skull in his safe---and now in the hands of that---human--loomed over him like the Reaper.A hollow gaze was trained on the Homunculus. The gaze of someone long-dead, a human when alive, a creature whose existence was void of purpose outside of the designs of higher beings. He stared into these same, seemingly inconsequential sockets, paralyzed, every muscle frozen.

The bloodied corpse of the human child he had just thrown against the wall lay motionless, stiff, as he stood now. A quick retribution. The alchemist---that devil---clutched the skull unflinchingly towards him despite his gaping wounds, as if keeping a wild beast at bay. For the most human of Homunculi the Fuhrer was quite the brute.

The surrounding waves of fire burned a red glow in the sockets. Demons dancing in a void. Still no movement. This living demon dipped his finger in his own blood and placed it on the skull. Somehow, his target's eyes were fixated on the smooth white bone and not the deadly array itself.

Why did it immobilize him? It belonged to an insignificant human!

The terror of the fake encountering the real thing. It was too---

---Idiotic. What did he care? His Master had given him a life and a purpose. A quasi-holy purpose. To safeguard the Philosopher's Stone, to prevent the irresponsible race from misusing it. The real Bradley..the fake Bradley? What did he know of this real Bradley, what was left of him staring him down---coldly, almost cruelly? With that ominous grin that meant everything except for what it was supposed to be: a smile.

That damned skull was much like him. When he smiled to himself, holding the leashes of the humans while they went about in their gleeful ignorance. The deceptive skull mirrored his life amongst the humans with scathing nonchalance, and the more he

Struggled uselessly against the paralysis.

Mustang had completed half of the blood circle. Selim's body lay there. The empty eyes of the skull watched him sweat and growl and engage in every sort of futile activity.

That's when it started. Mustang completed the blood circle, the skull glowed with a weak but unmistakable light, and the lethal fire lunged hungrily to its frozen target. The flames engulfed him once more and he could feel his flesh and muscle burn away for the final time but this time, as his body blackened and pieces of the artificial body fell apart and melted into the red water, the wall in his still-active conscious crumbled and a flash flood of images assailed him from all sides. As he grew more distant from that single-minded ambition that couldn't truly be called his, the rapid flow of images intensified. More of him melted into the puddle of crimson.

In his brain that was cooking in the boiling heat, the skull grew skin, hair--grew a body,

a real one—not made by man—it became a terrified human, watching in helpless terror as a woman mad with passion ran towards him with a stone in her hand---

He was dissolving fast.

There was a pile of organs---and a head starting to decay-a woman--Master-- looked down approvingly at the pile--the mass of body parts that she named Pride---right before the moment of death he remembered his moment of birth---no, REBIRTH..

In that instant, the moment of his death, he realized that the real Bradley was him.

The decaying head once more became the skull in the alchemist's unwavering hand. Its mocking gaze bore into the miserable splotch of red.

The physical details of the skull—the outlines, the deep grooves and crevasses, the shape--were long gone to the red puddle, leaving only its grim presence to torment what was left of his consciousness. But soon that would be gone, too..

As a winded Mustang hurled Bradley's skull into the ravenous flames, the liquid remains ofPride quivered in the realization of the irony that in the end, the alchemist did not kill him, but he had killed himself. Perhaps it was a final affirmation of the Fuhrer's sense of humor. And sure enough, as the skull collapsed into dust amdist the fire, Mustang could have inexplicably sworn that the skull was laughing.

End


End file.
